Times-News: 'Insulting' Chobani Deal 'Bilked Idaho Taxpayers'

More than a few eyebrows were raised earlier this month when, less than a year-and-a-half after it cut the ribbon to its 950,000-square-foot facility in Twin Falls, with promises of nearly 400 jobs, Chobani said it would lay off some of its Idaho employees.

In a scathing editorial, the Times-News writes that things "blew up in the face of Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter's administration earlier this month when it became obvious that yogurt giant Chobani had bilked Idaho taxpayers when it laid off 42 employees whose training had been paid by the state's workforce development fund."

The editorial goes on to say that the Chobani Twin Falls plant "became the poster child for everything wrong with a program that doles out the public's cash without much in the way of oversight, audit or review."

Ultimately, the Chobani deal is called "the most recent insult to Idaho taxpayers," according to the Times-News editorial, and is "merely a symptom of a much larger illness than an (Otter) administration hungry for talking points."